It wasn’t a restoration, rehabilitation, or recreation. Thursday’s uplifting, spirited event on the previously unfurnished playground adjacent to John F. Hartranft School in North Philadelphia was – in the truest sense – a revival....

PHILADELPHIA - The smell of fresh hardwood - northern hard maple wood, to be precise - was immediate, and symbolic.
For many reasons, the scents, too, were cause for a justifiably celebratory mood - the byproduct of the rallying of a neighborhood; the culmination of hard,...